A volunteer of the pro-Kremlin movement, All-Russia People’s Front, in occupied Donetsk. Photo: All-Russia People’s Front / Telegram
At least 93 Russian civil servants or volunteers may have been killed or injured in Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine in 2023, independent Russian media outlet IStories revealed on Thursday.
IStories analysed data from Russia’s Pension and Insurance Fund, which is responsible for paying out civil servants for injury or death, to find that it paid out 372 million rubles (€3.9 million) to volunteers and specialists sent to work in the occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions of Ukraine last year.
It is impossible to determine how many civil servants were killed and how many were injured, as both types of payouts are listed together, but IStories estimated that as many as 93 people could have been affected based on the average payout sum of 4 million rubles (€41,800).
IStories compared their findings to existing news reports, which suggested that at least 40 Russian civil servants, volunteers and other workers had been killed in occupied Ukrainian territories.
Residents of 17 Russian regions, as well as annexed Crimea, received compensation from the fund, IStories calculated, with the largest payment made to any Russian region — 174 million rubles (€1.8 million) — going to Moscow.
Despite the risks that Russian civil servants face working in Ukraine, the large salary can be particularly attractive to some. State workers get paid double their salary working in occupied territory, Russian legislation shows, with some paid up to a million rubles (€10,400) a month, according to independent media outlet Meduza.
